Base price: $9.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Panda Panda was provided by Allplay.
This is one of the most exciting weeks I’ve ever been behind on. My friend is visiting and we’ve been doing enough stuff that I just completely forgot that I hadn’t actually finished up these reviews, yet, so, if I get these done by midnight, consider that a What’s Eric Playing? miracle. It’s not going to happen, but I like to remain aspirational even in the face of fairly certain odds. That’s life for you, sometimes. We’ve actually been playing a good number of games while they’ve been here, which has been great, both because games are fun and as a reviewer. Which is more important? Don’t worry about it. Let’s move on.
In Panda Panda, your goal is to win. Naturally. The challenge is, you can only win at the start of your turn, so even if you’re winning right now, who knows what the game will look like when it gets back around to you. Gloat too much and your opponents will know that they need to mess with you, but there’s only one way to do so: forcing you (and everyone else) to pass cards around. It’s tough. This quick and snappy game of hand management waits for nobody, so will you be able to keep your cards long enough to win?
Contents
Setup
This one’s super easy. Give each player a reference card:
Should be on the 0 side. Then, shuffle the cards and deal each player 5:
You’re good to start!
Gameplay
This one is silly but fun. Your goal is to have one of the “winning” hands pictured on the reference card. Each turn, as a result, you can either:
- Draw a card from the deck.
- Draw a non-A card from the discard pile. No taking any As!
- Discard a card.
Easy, right? Not quite. If a player discards an A, all players must simultaneously pass a card to their left. Could mess you up.
If you start your turn with a winning hand, say “Panda Panda!” and then reveal it. Then, flip your reference card to the 1 point side! First to two points wins!
Player Count Differences
The major one is just that more happens between your turns, so I generally expect games with more players to take longer. With two, as long as your opponent doesn’t play an A, you win. With six players, all with their own schemes, who knows who will play what by the time things get back around to you. The short playtime and high chaos at high player counts work well in Panda Panda’s favor, though at two, it’s fairly cutthroat since you know that playing an A usually is because you can’t do anything and are trying to dunk on your opponent. I’m pretty happy either way. As a result, no major preference for player count, with this one.
Strategy
- Try not to telegraph. If you’re going to win on your turn, hide it as best as you can. You don’t want other players to know that you’re probably going to win, otherwise they’re going to play an A and do their best to mess up your perfectly-planned schemes. So, just keep that to yourself.
- Keep a dump card for as long as you can. You want to wait for a few As to come around and go before you get down to your ideal hand size, I think. That way, you can have a few extra cards that you can pass when someone else plays an A. If you get down (or go up) too early to your winning hand, those As that players have been holding will get played and goof you.
- When you’re forced to pass, if you don’t want to pass, get rid of the card you think you’re most likely to be passed. I usually try to pass a B or a C. If you’re planning to win with the G, don’t pass it? There’s only one of it.
- It’s totally fine to draw more than seven cards; you just can’t win with more than seven cards. Having extra cards gives you more options. Just keep in mind that you still can only discard one card per turn, so, naturally, you’ll have to get back down and that can take a while.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art style is pretty pleasant! It’s bright and colorful, and for small games, you kinda need them to pop to get player interest piqued. I think these games certainly do that, and Panda Panda is definitely one of the more striking.
- I really like this new box size for Allplay. It’s a small box, to be sure, but you don’t see a ton of players in the small box space (Pack O Game, Button Shy, and Oink most immediately come to mind). It’s always nice to have a bunch of games that you can take with you all at once.
- (The price point isn’t bad, either.) Look, at What’s Eric Playing?, we try not to quibble too much about the “value” of a game because, again, we get the games for free usually (or we bought them ourselves, so we already implicitly believe they’re worth the price). I try not to buy bad games on purpose, y’all. But, there are things that are objectively lower-priced than you usually see from games, and anything under $10 is a pretty low price. This comes in at a firm $9, which is nice.
- Plays extremely quickly. 15 minutes is a pretty short game no matter how you slice it.
- The Red Panda card is extremely fancy. It’s got that gold foil treatment; you love to see it.
Mehs
- I don’t really want to hate on pandas, but I think I preferred the original incarnation (Cat Poker), thematically. I just like cats more than pandas; I don’t know what to tell y’all.
Cons
- This is one of those games where it doesn’t always feel like you can connect from strategy to victory, though the length and speed of play helps mitigate that negative feeling somewhat, for players. You might tell me that that’s an objective problem, but I’ve yet to beat one of my friends at this game, and so that makes me feel like either we’re in a very very improbable scenario or she’s doing something I’m not. Not entirely sure yet. But the feeling like your strategy may or may not have any bearing on the game’s outcome can be frustrating, even for shorter games. Thankfully, this is an extremely short game, so usually the response is just to try again if you lost.
Overall: 8.25 / 10
Overall, I think Panda Panda is a hoot! I mean, if this is the standard Allplay is trying to set with their microgames, they’re hitting the mark really well. It’s quick, it’s light, and it’s fun, and those are three great things for a tiny game to be. I wouldn’t mind if microgames were maybe less quick and less light, granted, but I’m pretty happy with microgames as a genre, and leaning light when you’re breaking into a space is never a bad idea. What motivated the switch from cats to pandas? These are questions that linger, unfortunately. The world may never know. Or I could ask. I’ll ask later. I think my only real issue with the game is that it’s still hard to connect the dots between “strategy” and “victory”, but sometimes that works in my favor. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not that I think that the game is fundamentally “random”; it’s more that I wish I could find easier ways to exert control over the outcome based on what I play. It’s about the feeling the game creates. That’s largely okay, though, given how short the game is. I have a much higher tolerance for shenanigans with shorter games, and this is a game by and for shenanigans. If that sounds up your alley, you’re a huge fan of pandas, or you just love tiny box games, you might enjoy Panda Panda! I’ve been having fun with it.
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